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In the
aftermath of the incident of brutal gang rape and subsequent murder of a young
girl ‘Nirbhaya’ in Delhi, there was
massive outrage and strident demands for stringent laws to convict the
perpetrators of barbaric crimes against women and award them deterrent
punishment. In response to these humongous protests, the government did wake up
and a committee was set up headed by Justice Verma to recommend changes to
strengthen the punitive system of our society. The committee did discharge its
duties faithfully in a short span of time and for the first time, there was a
set of reasoned recommendations, backed by painstaking homework recognising
that sexual violence was about power, not sex; and that urged the citizens to
stop viewing women as repository of family honour and instead understood sexual
violence in terms of an attack on women’s bodily integrity and dignity. The
Justice Verma Report was a breath of fresh air, letting in the flowing wind of
freedom into all the prisons of patriarchy.

The
new law (in which most of the ‘controversial’ issues have been left out),
undoubtedly, broadens the definition of sexual violence, recognises stalking,
molestation, harassment, acid-throwing and voyeurism as an offence, and
introduces harsh punishments, but contains many conflicting issues that militate
against women’s autonomy and rights, and protect the impunity of the convict
and hence need to be discussed thoroughly.

Firstly,
the ordinance makes the perpetrator of rape ‘gender neural’, i.e. both men and
women can be accused of rape. This could mean that if a woman garners courage
to file a rape complaint against an accused, he has the right to file a counter
complaint of rape against her. It seems the new provisions tend to make women
even more vulnerable than they are under the existing laws.

Secondly, the ordinance legitimises
marital rape and strengthens the idea of commodification of a wife in the hands
of her husband. It also retains the provision of lesser sentence (minimum of
two years) for a husband who rapes a legally separated wife. So, even if a wife
has the audacity to challenge the norms of this patriarchal society and separate
herself from an abusive husband, the gray areas of the law can be exploited to undermine
the rape complaint and make excuses to get away with harsh punishment.

Thirdly, the ordinance is aimed at
branding any sexual contact between young girls (between the age of 16 and 18)
and their male counterparts by their consent as ‘sexual violence’, which in
itself is an attack on the freedom of young people. Not only does it fail to
ban the mortifying ‘two-finger test’, its definition of rape actually
legitimises it, in the name of “penetration for medical purposes”.

The
shoddily-drafted and anti-women law, enacted stealthily before any citizen of
the country could analyse it, is not only a disservice to the painstakingly
prepared Justice Verma Report but a breach of trust that was bestowed on the
lawmakers by the innocent citizens.

As
long as the key issues regarding the safety of women are neglected, their
autonomy and rights will continue to remain imperilled in the prisons of
patriarchy.